The transverse Mercator was invented by Lambert in 1772.
In this projection the cylinder touches a meridian along
which there is no distortion. The distortion increases away
from the central meridian and goes to infinity at 90 from
center. The central meridian, each meridian 90
away
from the center, and equator are straight lines; other parallels
and meridians are complex curves. The projection is defined
by specifying:
The optional latitude of origin defaults to Equator if not specified.
Although defaulting to 1, you can change the map scale factor via
the MAP_SCALE_FACTOR parameter.
Our example shows a transverse Mercator map of south-east
Europe and the Middle East with 35E as the central
meridian:
pscoast -R20/30/50/45r -Jt35/0.18i -B10g5 -Dl -A250 -Glightgray -W0.25p -P > GMT_transverse_merc.ps
The transverse Mercator can also be used to generate a global map--the
equivalent of the 360 Mercator map. Using the command
pscoast -R0/360/-80/80 -JT330/-45/3.5i -B30g15/15g15WSne -Dc -A2000 -Gblack -P > GMT_TM.ps